Strategies to Increase Survey Response Rates From Youth

This blog shares five key lessons from our work to evaluate MWB. Although our evaluation focused on a sex education program, these strategies are more broadly applicable to youth-serving programs and evaluations. We hope they can help other researchers and practitioners develop and refine effective strategies for keeping youth engaged in research over time.

Collect multiple forms of contact information from participants and update them often.

Adolescents can be hard to reach, as they may lack consistent access to a phone or email. To maintain engagement over time, collect several forms of contact information, including their phone numbers and email addresses. We also recommend collecting contact information for two trusted adults or friends who can be reached in instances where a participant’s contact information is no longer valid, or if they do not respond. Regularly update this information (in our case, we updated during both pre- and post-program surveys) to ensure it remains accurate.

Even with regular updates, we’ve often found that youth’s phone numbers are no longer active by the long-term follow-up survey. Reaching out to a trusted adult or friend can help you reconnect with participants.

Ensure that youth know who is contacting them and why.

When we reach out to participants for the MWB long-term follow-up survey, it’s been nine months since programming ended so it’s important that participants are expecting to hear from us. During program sessions—especially the final one—curriculum facilitators remind youth about the follow-up survey, highlight the $25 incentive for completing it, and explain who will be contacting them and when. After programming ends, we send automated monthly reminders with information about the final survey.

When it is time for the follow-up survey, facilitators reach out directly to participants to schedule in-person survey sessions. For youth completing the survey remotely, text messages with survey links include program-specific details, such as the facilitator’s name or program location, to jog participants’ memory and build trust.

Be persistent about outreach and use a variety of methods.

Reaching youth for the follow-up survey often requires multiple attempts. With approval from our Institutional Review Board, we contact youth in-person, by text, and by phone up to 10 times over the course of 4-6 weeks. While we typically begin with an in-person survey session, many participants are unable (or choose not) to attend; we follow up with these youth via text message. Since many see the message but are not able to complete the survey right away, we send additional reminders at different times of day to increase the chance that they’ll see the text and complete the survey when convenient. If there is still no response after two additional texts, we switch to phone calls. Sometimes we ask different staff members—including curriculum facilitators—to reach out, another tactic that has improved our response rates.

As a final attempt—after texting and calling both the participant and their trusted contacts—we send a message that begins, “Last chance to earn your $25 gift card.” This message has consistently prompted survey responses from youth who had not responded earlier.

Keep the survey as short as possible and reduce participants’ barriers to completing it.

We designed our follow-up survey to be as short as possible and conducted cognitive interviews to ensure that the content was easy to understand and follow for youth ages 15-19. To reduce barriers to completing the survey and reach as many participants as possible, we offer the follow-up survey during in-person sessions (at implementation sites) and send survey links via text and email (as described above). Despite the survey’s relatively short length, youth completing it virtually often do not finish it in one sitting. We have provided return codes to these young people to allow them to return and complete the survey later, a strategy that has reduced the number of incomplete responses.

When needed, involve school and community partner contacts in outreach.

Points of contact (POCs) at schools and community organizations implementing an SRH program are critical for boosting follow-up survey response rates. These individuals often know participating youth well and understand when and where to reach them. We have found in-person outreach by facilitators and site POCs to be especially effective in re-engaging participants who have not responded to texts or calls. This approach works best when facilitators and POCs collaborate to identify opportunities for participants to complete the survey during the school day.

Footnote

[1] Note: We offer youth a $25 incentive to increase response rates and demonstrate that we value their time and perspectives. However, this resource focuses on nonmonetary strategies to increase response rates; we will discuss financial incentives in another resource.

This publication was made possible by Grant Number 90AP2693-04-00 from the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. Its contents are solely the responsibility of Child Trends and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.